


Limbo

by clawstoagunfight (orphan_account)



Series: Worth 1000 Words [8]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Episode: s04e12 Smoke & Mirrors, F/M, Limbo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:59:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/clawstoagunfight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison sees the last person she expects to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limbo

**Author's Note:**

> Un beta'd, so all of the mistakes are mine.
> 
> Basically, this is what I think happened when Derek "died" in Smoke and Mirrors.

It’s a strange feeling—being out of one’s body.

Allison doesn’t know how quite to explain it. It’s like she’s floating, but that’s not really it. It’s like she’s weightless. It’s like she’s air. Frankly, it’s like she doesn’t have a body—which, she doesn’t, so that’s probably why it’s the only explanation she can think of.

Time passes differently here. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since she looked at Scott and felt her last breath pass her lips. It could be minutes, or months, or millennia. All she knows is that it’s gray and she thinks it would be cold if she could feel.

It’s still Beacon Hills—she thinks. It’s hard to tell, when the world is colorless, but she recognizes the crumbling remains of the high school; the mortar eroded and the bricks falling in heaps to the ground. She sees other people in it still—other weightless souls floating through the rubble.

She asked one of them, once—in the wordless way of communicating they have here—why they kept coming back to the ruin. The person—man? Woman? It was impossible to tell the gender of people here—had looked at her and told her that just because her vision of the school was that of destruction, didn’t mean that everyone’s was. It was only then that she started to understand the workings of this place—hell? Heaven? Purgatory? Or maybe even some kind of limbo?

Each person’s view of the world is based on what they saw in their life. Maybe it should’ve bothered Allison more that everything she saw was nothing but a shell of what it used to be. She floats across town, seeing the gas station where she’d been kidnapped, closed up and empty. The pumps are nothing more than concrete blocks; useless. She sees the bowling alley where she and Scott had double dated with Lydia and Jackson. The floor dusty, the pins skewed about the building, overturned, broken; the bowling balls cracked.

She thinks she sees Matt for a moment near the river, hiding under the broken remains of the bridge, but then he’s gone in a flash, and she never sees him again.

In fact, she doesn’t see anyone that she knows—or knew. She goes looking for her mother, once, in the house where they used to live. It’s surprisingly still standing, still in one piece, although the paint is peeling inside and the floorboards are coming up in some spots. She goes to her old room, maybe expecting to float through the door and see her mom on the other side, smiling at her. But instead, the room is empty. The window is broken and what’s left of her mother is long gone.

After that, she stops looking for anyone.

She feels a heaviness that she can’t explain, like her soul—spirit? Life-force?—is under strain. It takes her a while to figure out that it’s the weight of sadness, but she can’t feel the sorrow. She floats further and further out of town. She doesn’t know how much time passes as she makes her way to the preserve, but it feels to her like an eternity. She slowly makes her way through the forest of dead trees. The leaves on the ground crumble in what little wind there is.

It should smell like dead growth; everything here should smell dead, but instead all she can smell is the faint scent of smoke.

She keeps moving, not knowing where she’s going until she ends up on the overlook where she and Scott used to sneak out to meet.

But she’s not alone.

The last person she expects to see there is Derek Hale.

She can’t even really explain how she knows it’s him. It’s like when she glimpsed at Matt; something inside of her recognized the other person, even though everyone here is faceless and body-less. She knows it is Derek in front of her. And when he turns and sees her, she knows without a doubt that he knows it’s her, too.

_Allison_? For the first time since she got here, she wonders what life without her is like for the rest of them. _Allison, what’s going on? Where am I? What are you doing here?_

Allison floats closer. She wants nothing more than to reach out and set her hand on Derek’s shoulder, but she knows she can’t. _Derek. It’s okay. You’re in the preserve._

_The preserve? But I was in Mexico…_ She waits and lets him work through his thoughts a little, until something in him changes, and she knows he’s finally figured it out. _I’m dead. I—I died? But Scott, he needs me—_

_Shh,_ Allison tries her best to soothe him, even though that heavy feeling of mock-sadness is back and stronger than ever. She looks at Derek, and he starts to change, somehow. It’s like he’s changing shape, or becoming more solid.

The light inside of him grows brighter. _I have to get back to them. They need me_ , Derek pleads, floating closer to her.

Allison can’t help it, even though she knows it’s a useless gesture, she reaches out for Derek, toward where he’s glowing bright enough to make her world seem a little less dull.

All she feels is warmth. It seeps into her, the first thing she’s felt since she got here. It’s then that she knows there’s something different about him. She catches the scent of smoke again and knows Derek is the reason.   _Then go, Derek. Go to them. It’s not your time; not yet._

Derek looks at her and she can practically feel the battle warring inside of him. _I’m sorry, Allison. I have to go._

_It’s okay, Derek._ She says. And it is. She’s been dead too long now. She can’t go back to them; but Derek, he can.

Derek’s shape changes, transforms, like he’s becoming something new. He glows bright, and then he’s gone.

And Allison is alone once more.

 


End file.
